Many call it one of Napa County’s best kept secrets. The only problem the Brakesman’s find today is getting their guests to leave. One couple came for a tasting and stayed for three days! During all that hard work, Bob and Sue managed to have three children. Heather, who studies animal biology and her husband Mark, a Cal Poly horticulture graduate, help care for the vineyards and orchards. Brian has his degree from Cal Poly in agricultural engineering. He manages the vineyard and is the assistant wine maker. The youngest, Danny, spends his days saving lives as an EMT and volunteer fireman.

Today, two beautiful grand-daughters: Emily Kestrel (Cabernet) and Clair Riley (Port) run and play among the vines, climb the trees and play with the dogs, Bear and Winston Presley and care for their ponies just as the last generation did.

And the love story continues...

come see for yourself.

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Summit Lake Vineyards: An Informal History

The story of Summit Lake Vineyards begins forty years ago when Bob and Sue Brakeman, the owners and operators of Summit Lake Vineyards, met at Jordan Jr. High School in Palo Alto, California. After graduating from Palo Alto High School in 1964, Bob went to the University of California at Berkeley to study mechanical engineering, and Sue went to Foothill Jr. College in Los Altos to study biology.

Bob joined the Phi Gamma Delta house and Sue would visit on weekends, enjoying all the activities that made the "Fijis" famous-not protesting the war or burning bras or marching on the student union. What they were famous for was their wild parties and their mysterious fraternity brother, Bill Gamma. When the chancellor realized he was a fictitiously registered student to whom all vehicles, library books, beer kegs, etc. were registered, the entire fraternity was asked to leave and never return to another U.C. campus.

Soon after the "Fiji" fiasco, Bob and fraternity brother Tom Anderson took a year off- They flew to England, purchased a Volkswagen van and traveled through Europe and the Middle East, as far as Afghanistan and Indian Nepal. Upon his return. Bob enrolled at San Jose State. While Bob finished his degree, he and Sue lived in a romantic cabin on a horse-boarding ranch in the foothills of west San Jose. The Agees, their landlords, had extensive gardens, chickens, goats, dogs, cats, and, of course, many horses. They loved their new home. One afternoon, out by the north corral, Bob met one of the neighbors, Peter Mirassou, Peter had recently retired as CEO of Mirassou Vineyards, Bob had begun making his own beer and invited Peter home for a taste. In the course of their conversation, Peter suggested Bob try "brewing wine." The Agee ranch was surrounded by orchards and vineyards. That fall, late one evening. Bob liberated some of the local grapes. Following the ancient tradition, they crushed the purloined fruit by foot in open top fermenters (new plastic garbage cans). Their wine-making days had begun.

Bob graduated from San Jose State in January, 1971. To celebrate, Bob and Sue packed their Dodge Van and look off for South America. They drove to Miami and joined another fraternity brother, Peter Downy, who was finishing a Peace Corps assignment in Chile. They spent many hours sipping the luscious wines of small family-run wineries in Peru. Chile, and Argentina. This led Bob to question whether he wanted to be an engineer or explore his growing passion for wine and wine-making. On their return, they moved from the San Jose cabin. Bob went to Point Reyes to help his friend Tom build a house in the forest; Sue returned to her family home in Palo Alto, They would travel different routes through the northern California wine country, looking for an affordable piece of land to start their own vineyard. Bob was always drawn back to the Napa Valley-On November 12th, 1971, Sue returned home from work. Bob was there with birthday champagne for her Her mother, acting a bit strangely, kept telling her to open her birthday card. Inside the card was the deed to Summit Lake Vineyards! It described twenty-eight acres of land, eight planted in pre-prohibition zinfandel (their favorite variety), fruit trees in the orchard, a chicken house, garage, huge redwood barn, a walnut grove, vistas in every direction, and a house built in the 1880s. Reading the deed, Sue thought Bob had purchased paradise.

On Christmas Eve of that year, they left their old life behind. Having yet to see the ranch, Sue was giddy with anticipation. When they finally entered the gate and drove down the muddy driveway, her heart sank. It was Paradise all right, she thought, but after the Fall. The deed had failed to mention that the property had been abandoned for over thirty years and was completely overgrown with manzanita, coyote weed and poison oak. Only the house had been used, but it too had fallen into a woeful state of disrepair. The house was filthy, it was freezing cold, and the fireplace barely worked; after placing buckets around to catch the leaks, they went to bed listening to the storm. The next morning there was snow on the windowsill and the bedroom floor. They dressed and rushed outside into their first white Christmas on Howell Mountain, Sue's anxieties vanished when she saw how a beautiful white coat of snow had transformed the land. They rolled up their sleeves and went to work - a lot of work!

Their first step was to befriend their local farm advisor, Jim Lider, who quickly became their guru. He helped them to define the soil, told them the history of the vineyard, and recommended root stocks. Well into their third month on the ranch, they discovered a pre-World War II Caterpillar tractor hidden in the brush. After several trips to "tractor graveyards" in Petaluma, Bob worked his magic and the work became easier. It took a little over two years to clear the land and resurrect the old eight-acre zinfandel vineyard.

After restoring the old zinfandel vines, Bob and Sue needed to expand and improve the rest of the land. When they needed vines, they both went to work at a nursery in St. Helena that produced bench grafts (baby grape vines). They worked the 6:00 p.m. to midnight shift, staying a couple of hours more each night grafting their own vines. They planted them in milk cartons and lined them up behind the house with overhead sprinklers to keep them healthy. On weekends, friends with white-collar jobs would come up to the ranch and help plant new vines, enticed by the promise of a six-pack of cold beer upon the completion of a row. It took three years to plant thirteen acres of new vines, eleven of zinfandel and two of cabernet. During this time, Heather, their first child, was born. She spent the time strapped to Sue's back or sitting in a big canning pot, playing with water dribbling from a hose, happy to watch her young parents work.

When the vines needed water. Bob went to work for a company that installed drip irrigation systems. It was the company's policy to bury leftover pipes and fittings because it was too costly to return them to the warehouse. Soon the leftovers began to come home on the back of their flatbed truck. Within a year their irrigation system was complete. It was then time to let the vineyard mature.

When Bob needed to perfect his wine making skills, he took a position as cellar foreman at Freemark Abbey Winery which , in the early 80s, was considered one of the best of the thirteen wineries on the valley floor. Owners Chuck Carpy, Bill Yeager and Frank Wood were legendary. Their winemaker, Jerry Luper, became a friend and mentor to Bob, Freemark developed many innovative techniques, producing one of the first Trockenbeerenauslesen in California (a sweet late harvest wine). Bob was in heaven for the next six years. During the crush of 1975, their son Brian was born.

Before 1985 all harvests were parties. Friends would begin to arrive on Thursday night and the fields would begin to look like an ad for The Whole Earth Catalog. Bright and early Saturday morning everyone would invade the vineyards with assorted trucks, lug boxes, grape knives, and first aid kits. Soon the fruit would arrive at the crush pad behind the house. The men would flex their muscles and begin pitch-forking the grapes into the stemmer-crusher. During crush Sue would act as queen bee in the kitchen directing all the gals in preparing the night's feast. Dining, dancing and hot tubbing would last well into the night. The following morning, those who could crawl out of their sleeping bags would come down into the basement and help bottle the wine from two harvests ago. The old hand corker made a wonderful rhythm. Music and laughter filled the basement as they worked and talked about the crazy activities of the previous evening. Everyone left with at least one free case of wine.

When they outgrew the small cellar under the house, it was time to build a winery. A sight was cleared and leveled and a massive cement pad was poured. Their three children's handprints can still be found on the northwest comer. Their youngest, Danny, born in 1979, and their old dog Blue, left many additional prints. The walls were constructed and raised with the help of neighbors and their tractors. With the rafters in place, Sue's cousins Mark and Russell skillfully laid the roof. A couple of coats of paint on the walls and a beautiful mural on the big front doors painted by Sue's uncle Ralph completed the job. Bonded winery #5255 was finished in 1985.

Bob's engineering degree kicked into full throttle when the winery needed equipment. He began working for The Complete Winemaker in St. Helena. Bob was soon traveling to wineries springing up in Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino, designing and installing their new bottling lines. When they had problems, Bob fixed them. He also kept a sharp eye on equipment ready to be replaced. A filler from here, a labeler from there, tanks, barrels, pieces of this and that, lots of stainless steel, and the winery was ready to go. Summit Lake Vineyards' first commercial release, the 1978 Zinfandel, won the coveted double gold medal at the California State Fair. It sold out in just eight days. They had done it!

This Christmas the Brakesmans will celebrate their thirtieth year at Summit Lake Vineyards. There is much they are thankful for. Their daughter Heather, who studies animal biology, married the talented horticulturist Mark Griffin, and gave them Emily Kestrel (namesake for their Cabernet Sauvignon) and Clair Riley (namesake for their Late Harvest "Pirate Reserve" Zinfandel Port). Their son Brian's recently acquired degree in Agricultural Engineering is an invaluable asset to the management of the vineyard and winery. Their son Danny spends his days saving lives as an emergency medical technician and volunteer fireman. The lives of the Brakesmans are as rich as the land they farm and the wines they make.

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